As a new academic year approaches in
Jordan, over 64,000
high school graduates have submitted their university
applications across the country. No doubt, traditional majors, like
engineering, medicine, and pharmacy, will be on the top of the wish list for
the bulk of the new batch of college-bound students. This year, however, a
significant segment will be heading towards new majors, hoping to distinguish themselves
in the job market from the crowds that graduate each year with increasingly
redundant degrees awarded in old cookie-cutter programs.
اضافة اعلان
These new majors offer new hope and
opportunities for both incoming and graduating university students. The
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has been actively encouraging all
universities to rethink and update their existing programs, all to better ready
our graduates for the labor market, both in Jordan and abroad. This means
redesigning and establishing programs that emphasize problem solving, critical
thinking and soft skills gained through the practical application of theory. It
also means developing programs that work on closing serious conceptual gaps
that have been created by the rote-memorization approach cultivated through the
tawjihi system of education.
The most profound gap that needs to be
closed is teaching students not what, but how to read, write, and think. These
are highly transferable skills that never become outdated or confined to a
particular body of knowledge. In a fast-paced, globalized world, having the
ability to formulate the right questions, do research and offer solutions to
emerging problems is the key to success in any field of study.
Updating English language and literature
Recently, I have been involved in updating
one of the most redundant
BA programs in the country, “English language and
literature”, which is offered in every university in nearly identical ways in
Jordan since it was first established at the University of Jordan in 1962.
My colleagues would often remark that the
very same classes they took as undergraduates, like “English literature from
1850” or “English literature to 1660”, they were still required to teach. This
is not to say that these classic or traditional subjects do not have merit and
value; indeed, I believe, they do. The problem is that their value gets
diminished by the fact that there are no other approaches towards this
important major.
Like a cookie cutter, each year, every
graduate from every university gets basically the same degree in order to enter
the same job market. This is the very definition of saturation and stagnation
in any field.
In the development of the updated program,
we undertook a thorough market study and found that while there was a glut of
English language and literature students in Jordan’s job market, conceptual and
skill-based gaps left open a real demand for individuals with effective
communication skills in English who are attuned to Jordan’s cultural beliefs,
values, and norms.
The old cookie-cutter approach towards this
field left out courses that would hone technical and creative writing skills,
and that are essential to being able to use language strategically and
meaningfully to develop effective oral, written, and visual messages, stories,
and texts. In other words, the old
English language and literature programs
effectively steered their graduates away from meeting job market needs.
AUM’s approach
In the update undertaken at the
American University of Madaba (AUM), the English Language & Literature program was
reimagined as “
English Language, Culture & Communication” (ELCC). In this
approach to the BA program, generic courses have been brought up to date and
made more relevant. For example, “Grammar I” was replaced with “Copyediting
& Copying Writing”, and “Phonetics I” was retooled to become “Spoken &
Written Text in Context”. This renovation of the entire study plan aimed to
retain the fundamental knowledge areas of the field, but with a fresh,
practical, and highly transferable skill-based approach to their
application.
Another innovation in ELCC’s study plan is
that students will be able to take up to five elective courses in specialized
areas, including
Arabic-English translation, design and visual communication,
and classic literature. Moreover, ELCC students will be required to complete a
field training course for a semester, giving them the opportunity to interact
with professional industries and organizations before graduation.
Most importantly, throughout the entire
program, students are encouraged to develop their own unique CV, based on their
individual talents and interests, so that our students, our
"cookies", stand out from the rest.
More to be done
The
experience of developing the updated program made me realize that hope is out there, but much more can be done to
break the standard, cookie-cutter approach towards higher education in Jordan.
One day soon, I hope, students will be able
to apply to universities based on their achievements beyond a single
standardized test score and have the option to apply to any major that
genuinely interests them. I also hope they will be able to undertake double
majors and minors, and that universities will completely phase out or
dramatically revise the existing saturated majors and replace them with unique,
interdisciplinary programs.
Much work is to be done on multiple fronts,
today and in the future. We need graduates who are prepared to do it.
Christina Zacharia Hawatmeh, PhD
Sociology, is an Assistant Professor at the American University of Madaba,
Jordan. She is the chair of both the Department of English Language, Culture
& Communication and Department of Translation (c.zacharia@aum.edu.jo).
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